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At around two in the morning, Yoongi is woken by a sickening thud and a groan. No, not around—at exactly two thirteen AM, he remembers, because the glowing green numbers are seared into the lines of his memory. Two thirteen AM, Yoongi is a light sleeper. He sits up, reaching into the side of the bed that Jeongguk sleeps in, and comes up empty.
Some part of the evening has always felt like half-dream, half-reality, all nightmare. Even now when Yoongi thinks back on it he can’t quite discern which parts of it had been real and which parts of it he’s forgotten, and which parts he made up.
On what would be otherwise a normal Thursday night (come back from work, dinner, shower with Jeongguk, try not to have too much sex because they both have work in the morning), Yoongi is shaken awake by the sound of Jeongguk hitting the floor of the hallway outside by the bathroom.
“Jeongguk!”
All he does is groan in reply, struggling to sit up and crying out in fear when one of his arms gives up beneath him.
“Hey, I’ve got you, I’ve got you—are you okay? Did you trip?”
“Hyung,” Jeongguk says.
“Yeah. Are you okay? Dizzy?”
Jeongguk’s eyes are unfocused, like it is taking every fiber of his being to hold Yoongi in his field of vision. “M’fine,” he mutters. “Fine. M’okay. Felt dizzy. Fell.”
“Your words are slurring, are you sure?”
“Fine, fine,” Jeongguk says, reaching for the doorframe of the bathroom. He does not sound like he is trying to convince anyone but himself. “Fine.”
“Are you trying to get up? Here, I’ll help.”
It is only then, when Jeongguk attempts to stand, and his legs give out like jelly beneath him, that Yoongi knows something is horribly, horribly wrong.
“Can someone as young as him even suffer a stroke?”
“It’s not common, though not unheard of.” The neurologist wears a white coat over an immaculately pressed blouse, a vision of composure beside the mess that Yoongi is, feels like, has been for what seems like the past week. “The CT scans are showing that he had a blockage in the right side of his brain in the area affecting gross motor skills such as walking and coordination of the left side of his body. There seems to be severe associated weakness in his right side, too, though his left brain is unscathed. In time his speech should return to normal as long as he exercises that area of his brain every day. Talk to him.”
“What does it all mean?”
She nods. “Paralysis in his left leg, weakness in his right. Weakness in both arms. Speech might resemble that of being drunk for a while, but recovery is likely.”
“I understand, but,” Yoongi runs his fingers through his hair. They catch in knots. He doesn’t remember the last time he brushed his hair. The gemstone of his wedding band snags on a tangle and rips it from his scalp. “What does it mean for him? What can we do? What does the future—where do we go from here?”
The neurologist tells him a lot of helpful information, he’s sure. He just doesn’t know if he hears any of it. Some of it passes through one ear and out the other. Some of it filters into his consciousness in breaks and catches, clinging to the insides of his skull like unwelcome moths. Will take a while. No guarantees. Good track record for at least partial recovery. Young survivors have plenty to hope for. On and on.
Sure, sure. This is her job. Here is what is wrong. Here is what you can do. Here is what you can expect. Yoongi cannot fault her for telling him the things she has told what must have been hundreds of patients before, things that she is trained to say, and nothing that might give him more hope than he can afford. He cannot fault her for holding pain at an arm’s length. This is not a pain that he would wish on anyone.
“Hyung?”
And Yoongi feels pathetic for hurting, when he is not the patient, not the one with an inability to move half his body. Still, it’s like being burned and drowned all once to watch someone he’d promised to spend his life with struggle to even smile.
“How are you feeling right now?”
“M’okay. Fine. A little numb on my right side. Can you pull the window shades down? It’s sunny.”
And this part, this part is not her job. This part only Yoongi sees, only the nurses see: the crooked end of the blinds, ruffled like Jeongguk had tried to get up and do it himself. Watching Jeongguk try to toss in bed by himself only to work up a sweat and accept help, because of course he wanted to try it without help first. He will reach for his phone and his hand shakes so bad it clatters to the floor and breaks a hairline fracture across the glass so that the time is warped in two halves, always.
“You should go home, hyung, you look like death. It’s not helping either of us if you get sick.”
Yoongi says nothing, bending down to pick the blanket off the floor where it lies in a misshapen heap. The placid blue print is pilled and faded. It’s visible in the glare of the afternoon sun. He straightens Jeongguk’s legs where his knees knock together and places his left foot on the footrest. “I’m fine,” Yoongi says, spreading the blanket over his lap and tucking the ends in.
“Hyung.” There’s a surprising strength in one of Jeongguk’s hands when he grabs Yoongi’s, and his weaker one comes to wrap around the back of Yoongi’s knuckles. “I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. You’ll be okay.”
“But what if I won’t be?”
“No such thing. You will be. You will.”
It’s like tearing a part of himself off his own body, but Yoongi eventually leaves the hospital once the doctors and nurses confirm that Jeongguk will soon be okay enough to be discharged to rehabilitation.
Mostly he has Jimin to thank—he strides in on Sunday afternoon holding two bouquets of flowers and determination on his face, and as much as Yoongi complains and protests, he is thankful for him. Jeongguk lights up at the sight of visitors.
“One from me,” Jimin says, laying a dance of tiger lilies across the nightstand, “and this is from Hoseok." A trio of sunflowers. “How is my little man?”
“Worse, now that you’re here,” Jeongguk says, and snorts. Jimin’s laugh is infectious, spreading through the coldest, most worried parts of Yoongi to air out the sheets and throw open the windows. He sits down on the hospital bed, across from Jeongguk in his wheelchair. The mattress creaks. “Hoseok couldn’t come. Dance showcase practice going late, late into the nights these days. He promises to visit next week when it’s over!”
Mostly Yoongi has Jimin to thank, because he more or less frogmarches him out of the hospital after moving through like a whirlwind.
“That’s gotta suck,” Jimin says, driving Yoongi through a maze of traffic. “How are his parents?”
“Came down in the first couple of days. They had to go back to Busan by the end of the week, but they’ll probably be back to visit him during physical therapy.”
“So he’s got hope, then?”
“What do you mean, he’s got hope,” Yoongi snaps. “He’ll be fine. He’ll walk again. He’ll definitely walk again.”
“Oh,” says Jimin. He looks over his shoulder, changes lanes. The silence is punctuated by the soft tick-tock of his blinker. “Is that what the doctors said?”
“It doesn’t matter what they say.”
“Has he been showing signs of walking again? I thought you said it fucked him up pretty badly.”
“He’s fine. He’ll be fine.”
Say it until you believe it. Say it until it’s true.
“Well, I’m happy to hear that. Jeongguk would be really upset if he had to give up his modeling career, so I’m glad you say he’ll make a full recovery.”
“He will,” Yoongi says, wishing to feel as certain as his words sound. “I’m sure he will.”
The rehabilitation center has none of the white rigidity of the hospital, full of natural light and indoor ponds, but it feels so far from home. Yoongi arrives in the evening after work, having been able to focus on precisely nothing all day. He finds Jeongguk in the hallway far from the wing he stays in, wheeling himself down the sunlit corridor with a girl in a shapeless mustard sweater.
“Hyung!” he says, pushing his wheelchair faster. His new companion follows, tugging the pole with her IV drip along behind her. “I thought you’d come after dinner.”
“I wouldn’t wait that long,” Yoongi says, leaning down to kiss Jeongguk’s forehead.
“Are you Yoongi?”
“Yeah.”
“Jeongguk talks a lot about you.” She points at Jeongguk’s hand, the one with the wedding band. “He says you gave him that.”
“I uh, yeah. I guess I did.”
When her nurse appears to collect her, Yoongi watches her leave with a wave. “Should I know what what was all about?”
“Her name’s Naejoo. Really nice! I met her in the dining hall, she came and sat down with me. She’s a little weird, but she’s good company. Alarmingly detailed knowledge about car parts.”
“Good to hear that you’re making friends. Here, I’ll push you,” says Yoongi. He takes the handlebars.
“Missed you,” Jeongguk says, tipping his head back as he tries to keep Yoongi in his view.
“I missed you too. Hardly got any work done today, even though we’re supposed to have the OST ready for MBC’s new drama by the end of next month.”
“I’m really okay. It’s kind of like summer camp, except not as fun, and the stories by the campfires are ankle mobility exercises.”
“Is that what you did today?”
“They’re starting small.”
“Small is good. Small becomes big.”
“You know, I was reading online today,” says Jeongguk. “You know modeling and photography for wheelchair users is becoming really popular? It looks like I’ll be just fine.”
“You will be. You’ll be so fine you won’t need to worry about wheelchair modeling, just the modeling.”
Jeongguk gives pause. “It’s modeling either way, hyung,” he says, quietly.
“I know, but. You don’t need to worry about that.”
“But just say I do?”
“You won’t.”
“Okay.”
Yoongi hears the drop in Jeongguk’s voice, and he stops to walk around Jeongguk’s wheelchair and see his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” Jeongguk shakes his head, but he won’t meet Yoongi’s gaze. “It’s fine.”
“No, talk to me. You want to be better, right?” Yoongi sandwiches one of Jeongguk’s hands between both of his, and it remains frighteningly limp.
“Of course.”
“You will be. We’re going to do everything we can. You’re one of the most driven people I know. What’s making you worry?”
“I don’t know. It’s okay. I’m sorry to worry you.”
“Don’t be sorry about any of this.” Yoongi rubs Jeongguk’s fingers in his palms. They’re cold, though Jeongguk has always run warm, a furnace in bed every night. “Do you want to get dinner?”
“I usually shower before dinner.”
“Oh, shall I call for your nurse?” Yoongi holds the door open with his foot to wheel Jeongguk into his room.
“No, I’m going to try doing it myself today.”
Yoongi balks. “Are you sure? I don’t think that’s—”
“I’m sure.” There’s a set to Jeongguk’s eyebrows that tells Yoongi that he’s made up his mind. “I’m going to be okay. My nurse told me yesterday that my progress is really promising. I can shampoo myself! She didn’t even need to help me much.”
The bit that Yoongi does need to help with is getting Jeongguk from his wheelchair into the shower seat. It clanks when he unfolds it, locking into place under the spray of the shower nozzle.
“Are you really sure about this?” Yoongi helps Jeongguk pull his clothes off, piling them on the counter by the sink. “I should really get your nurse.”
“No, I can do it.”
Yoongi doesn’t want to insist that Jeongguk is incapable of taking care of himself and bites his lip. He leans forward to let Jeongguk wrap his arms around his neck, hugs him tight around his middle, and bodily lifts him from the wheelchair. For a terrifying moment he thinks they might topple, but Jeongguk’s weak but mobile leg scrabbles for purchase on the tile and Yoongi deposits him carefully on the seat.
“Okay?”
Jeongguk steadies himself by the stainless steel handlebar. “I’m good.”
“Body wash, shampoo. Here’s your face wash I brought from home, too. Loofah and towel. If there’s anything you need, anything at all, just call my name, okay? I’ll just be on the other side of the door. You really don’t want any help?”
“No, hyung.”
So Yoongi tries to make himself comfortable once he fiddles with the shower knobs and gets it to just the right temperature Jeongguk likes, which is scalding. He tends to like coming out of the shower as pink as a lobster. It makes showering together a real ball considering Yoongi likes the water to be on the cool side. His chest hurts at the wonder of when they’ll just share a shower again, eye to eye, trying to kiss between suds.
Not that it’s ever been eye to eye, with Yoongi having to look up into Jeongguk’s face. He’s unaccustomed, now, to looking down for it.
hey, hope you’re doing alright. heard about jeongguk from hoseok and jimin. won’t ask if he’s okay—answer’s probably no, but hopefully he’s on the mend since the hospital you were at told me he’s been discharged to rehab for physical therapy. when can i visit?
Namjoon’s long texts are the only ones Yoongi will take the time of day to get all the way through before replying. He allows himself to be distracted, just for a moment, by the wallpaper of his homescreen. It’s a picture Jimin had snatched of Yoongi pushing Jeongguk’s cheeks together so his lips are pinched like a fish during a break of a photoshoot, so Jeongguk is wearing a crop top and high-waisted fishnets with red glitter in his hair. It had been a good day.
hey namjoon-ah thanks for asking after us. jeongguk is doing a lot better than the first week. not perfect but you know it’s coming along. i come every day after work so come visit anytime in the evening or anytime on the weekend let me know.
The sound of the shower is therapeutic and soothing, massaging the knots out of Yoongi’s thoughts. He can hear Jeongguk humming to himself, the wet squirt of bottles being squeezed, and the heavy pap-pap of thick soapsuds hitting the tile with a rinse.
A ding as Namjoon replies.
great, i’ll come on saturday. hang in there, okay? you’ll be fine. despite everything, it’ll work out. chin up.
i’ll see you th
There’s a thud from the bathroom, followed by a “Fuck!”
Yoongi jumps mid-text, nearly tripping on one of the bed’s feet in his scramble to get up. It feels too much like deja vu, and the numbers two-thirteen flash glowing, acid green through his mind.
“Jeongguk, are you okay?” He throws the bathroom door open to see Jeongguk struggling to sit up from the floor, his paralyzed leg twisted beneath him. The shower is still running. The mirror is foggy. Yoongi falls to the ground beside him, steam nearly obscuring him. “Jeongguk! Are you okay?”
“Fell,” he says. “I was just trying to turn it off. I just wanted to turn the shower off. I was so close, I did it all myself, none of it was even hard until I leaned too far and I forgot I couldn’t lean as far as I used to and when I tried to sit up I slipped and I—”
“No, no, hey, it’s okay,” Yoongi says, shushing him as Jeongguk’s voice begins to quaver and break. He gathers him into his arms, not caring how he’s soaking wet, not caring that the shower is raining droplets down his back at this angle and getting his clothes damp. It’s a bit of a reach, but Yoongi stretches one hand off and turns the dial until the water shuts off. “Shh, baby. Shh.”
Holding Jeongguk and reaching around him takes more choreography than Yoongi is used to. He manages to grab the towel from the counter and wrap it around Jeongguk’s shivering body. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt anywhere?”
Jeongguk shakes his head, mutely, where it’s buried in Yoongi’s shoulder.
“Do you want me to get the nurse?”
A nod.
“Okay.”
On Saturday, Jeongguk is not in his room or the corridors with the girl in the mustard sweater when Yoongi comes by with lunch.
“Are you looking for your husband?”
Yoongi turns from where he’s set down the two boxes of bento—lamb and katsu. Jeongguk is likely sick of the rehab food. “Yeah. Is he okay?” he says.
The nurse tilts her head in indication. “He’s great. We took him outside. It was a nice day earlier, so he wanted to stay in the garden for longer. Seemed to like feeding the birds with his bread roll from breakfast.”
Typical Jeongguk. “Thank you.”
But as luck would have it, Yoongi runs into Namjoon in the lobby on his way to the back where the gardens are. He nearly doesn’t recognize him; it’s been awhile since they’ve met up and in the time since Namjoon had dyed his hair black.
“No fire, I take it?” Namjoon holds up a tiny pastry box. “Thought I’d bring cookies instead of flowers.”
“Smart of you, as always. He’s in the garden right now. Come with, he’s going to be delighted to see you.”
The greenery of the rehabilitation center is impressive. There are flowers and trees and not a stair to be seen, except for the occasional three beside a ramp. There is an outside pond, too, this one with a lone duck and her band of mottled ducklings in a gaggle behind her.
“You’ve lost weight. You need to eat more, what use will you be to Jeongguk if you get sick, too? He’ll worry his head off.”
“I’m fine. Look, there he is.”
From here, he looks so small. Jeongguk had always been big, not quite hulking like Seokjin, but taller and heavier than Yoongi will ever know. There’s a half-torn bread roll in his hands. The shoulders of his faded aqua jacket look almost white in the cloudy afternoon.
And then, before Yoongi can cross the flowered lawn to where he sits in front of the koi pond, he begins to cry.
“Jeo—”
Namjoon stops him. His hand is viselike around Yoongi’s wrist, as if he knows he will try to shake him off. “Let me go,” Yoongi says. “Let me go, he’s—”
“Let him have time.” There are red marks on Yoongi’s skin where Namjoon's fingers had been. “Let him cry. From the night it happened until now, it doesn’t sound like he's had time to come to terms with everything.”
“But I want to tell him he’ll be okay.”
“That’s just it, Yoongi.” Namjoon’s voice wraps around Yoongi like a worn blanket, comforting without even knowing it. “The reality is that he might never be ‘okay’ the way you mean it again. Strokes don't discriminate with how debilitating they can be. You tell him he’ll be okay again, as in he’ll walk and dance and be the same person he was, but he might not be—no, he won’t be. Even if he one day stands on his own two feet, he’ll have known this pain. He’ll remember your hurt. The Jeongguk before all of this happened—the happy, carefree, often reckless one that I’d send home to you when he got drunk in my living room before you guys even dated—is already gone. Don’t tell him it’s okay to mean that he'll be that person again. He won’t be, and he knows it. Tell him it’s okay because it does not matter if he ever leaves that wheelchair again, he is still a full person with a full life waiting for him to live. That he has moved the world in tiny ways he may never know. Tell him it’s okay because he is worth everything. Even, apparently, your own well-being. Tell him your feelings won’t change. You didn’t marry him for his ability to walk, now, did you? So let him cry. Let him say goodbye to that person.”
The noises of Jeongguk’s sobs are just barely audible where they stand and the rhythm of it floating in and out of earshot makes them all the more heartwrenching.
“He’s scared,” is all Yoongi manages to say.
“He is. And I know you are too, even if you want to be unapologetically, unfailingly optimistic for him. I can see it in your face. Maybe what I’m trying to say is, well, for what it's worth, it is okay to be scared with him. What matters is that you remember and remind him that the future is always uncertain, but to hope for the absolute best.”
A child with a network of tubes snaking in and out of her hospital gown, frail as a daisy in spring, walks up to him then. She pulls a wagon behind her, half of it taken up by an oxygen tank, half of it home to a bed of flowers. Jeongguk’s tears seem to subside when she talks to him animatedly, patting his knee, asking him questions. Her nurse smiles behind her.
Yoongi watches as she reaches into her wagon and offers Jeongguk a handful of blooming baby’s breathe. He doesn’t react immediately, and she frowns before pushing them at him again.
Her nurse bends down, speaking quietly to her, before understanding comes across his face and she takes Jeongguk’s right hand from his lap and curls his fingers over the stems—delicately, because flowers know when you’ve been kind to them. For the first time in what seems like an eternity, Jeongguk laughs. It is a spot of sunshine on a bleak, rain-damp day.
“And who knows,” says Namjoon, squeezing a hand on Yoongi’s shoulder, letting him lean into his body. He’s needed it for a while. “Maybe the future is brighter than we know.”
Maybe it is.
It takes two full months of ankle exercises, knee exercises, muscle stretches, and all around physical therapy before the day comes that Jeongguk can hoist himself out of his wheelchair and to his feet. He is wobbly, as unsteady as a newborn fawn with both hands supporting his weight with the bars on either side of him, but Yoongi thinks he feels tears spring to his eyes (they do).
“Hyung,” he says, voice thick with emotion.
“Steady, steady,” says the therapist, a gentle hand on the small of his back. “Take it slow now.”
Some part of it is a little sad, when Jeongguk beckons for Yoongi come close so he can kiss him standing for the first time in weeks, and Yoongi can feel him shaking with the effort to stay upright. Jeongguk collapses back in his chair after another thirty seconds of this. Right now, standing is a chore. Walking seems like an unconquerable mountain. But it is not that he cannot walk that is sad, Yoongi understands.
Most of it, though? Most of it is happy. Happy that Jeongguk at the end of the day is okay, walking or not walking. Happy that they can still be together like this, wobbly kisses and all. Not much of it is sad, not really.
But maybe the road to recovery has never been about returning to the person you once were. Jeongguk laughs when Yoongi presses their foreheads together, heart too full to say anything without the tears falling in earnest. He would really rather not cry in front of Jeongguk's therapist. It’s a little more about recalibrating the world as you once understood where you belonged in. Falling in love with each other, the way you are now. Or seeing life differently as you did before. Or even coming to appreciate things you never once had a chance to.
Maybe that road is simply about learning to love yourself, despite everything.
No, not despite—because of everything.
Yeah. Jeongguk will be okay.